That's my issue, though. I'm trying to save for chests in order to increase my inventory capacity, but I don't have enough gold. I haven't spent any gold since starting the game and I've only got 296.
Strange. Have you opened all the coffins? Many of them have gold inside and some have weapons which is persistent after you return. I manage to enlarge the inventory by buying sac after the crypt (2 mages in party). I finish the swamp area and find little need of spending other than on food and some time, potions. May be it is just me...
After you finish the crypt and swamps, head to the ship, where you can summon half-giants and later sell their hammers .
Looks like I have to do a bit of a writeup, so here goes First of all, Gold is in pretty short supply early on (I actually liked that, gets the impression of being an in-the-gutter adventurer across nicely), so you have to spend it wisely. When you come out of the Crypt, you are still nearly broke: no shopping spree for you (yet). Don't forget that you can go back into the Crypt and grab any stuff you had to leave behind earlier. What I did: Increase Charisma of my main char to 30 (a tad expensive that early, but worth it). When I got enough stuff to sell from the Swamp, I bought inventory expansions. Might be worth it to save up for the big chests and get those right away, instead of working your way up. You won't need any extra equipment yet: The really good armours are expensive and need a high Strength stat to wear. And the lower-end ones simply aren't that good, no need to make them a priority. If you need extra armour to survive a fight, you can always cast the Armour spell. Take your time in the Swamp: The Necromancers keep summoning Skeletons. Dangerous, if they bring out more than you can handle, but a good source of income. Pick a good spot where you can defend easily and don't get surrounded, and hack away. The Necro staffs are pretty good equipment. Give one to each of your Mages, and keep at least one spare for later. Sell the rest, they go for a good chunk of Gold. I highly recommend to do "Under the Sea" before going to the Ship. One reason is that from Undersea you can leave anytime, while in the Ship you are stuck until you complete it. While Undersea is pretty difficult at this stage, you are in no rush. When you run out Mana, just return to the surface and rest up. Get the Cornucopia song from town, saves you the trouble with buying food. You should come out with a nice heap of Gold, and another Mage: she's a great choice for being your party's Bard. I spent my Gold in between to purchase stats for my Mages: You can get them all up to 30 at the various trainers in town. Before you go to the Ship, buy all the biggest inventory expansions you can afford. Throw out / sell everything that you don't need and sells for less than 100 Gold. Buy the "Looter" song, and make sure you have the instrument to play it. Like Johny wrote, in the Ship you can summon an infinite number of Giants, each dropping a Hammer and some Gold. What I did: I completed the Ship, but didn't talk to the Mage (that ends the chapter and brings you back to town). Instead, I went to that one large room in the North (I think 2nd deck) with the Summoning rectangle in the middle, and the thingie you need to reach the Mage to the south of it. I just kept fighting - and resting - there until my inventory was completely filled up with Hammers. Took an hour or so - yes, quite a lot of fights and I got an extra level for each of my Mages out of it. When I returned to town, I had over 20k Gold: Shopping time! I bought stats for the new Mage, and the remaining spells, then picked up the Mage in town as well. I spent my Gold on getting the best available staff for everyone, and then inventory expansions and better Mage-type armour pieces (the ones that increase your Magic stat). Misc. Notes: - You shouldn't have to spend any money on potions or food: Resting and the Cornucopia song should take care of all your needs in that area. - Shops restock when you leave and re-enter town. So if a shop e.g. only sells one of the thingies you need, buy it and leave town, then come back to get another one. - The Web spell should be handy, especially when dealing with several enemies at once - like the Swamp Necromancers and their minions. I think I didn't make enough use of it, making the fights harder than they needed to be. - If you want to min-max, do not spend any points on your stats right away. Wait until you bought all the stat increases you can in town. Note that this is entirely optional - at least on normal difficulty: I increased the stats of my main char and the Crypt Mage normally, and didn't optimise like this. And I am doing just fine. - When buying/selling stuff: Always have the Mage with the highest Charisma as active character and let her do all the shopping. The price differences between e.g. Cha 20 and Cha 30 are substantial.
You know what? I did not save my venture to the ship and now I can go underwater! (Note to self: never play this while traveling on the bus)
Ouch ... Which is exactly why I save manually quite frequently And I always keep a save from right at/before the start of each area, just in case I mess something up.
Didn't give this much attention because I thought Grimrock was all I needed. But your write up changed that, thanks Nullzone. Diving in headfirst now. Edit: The atmosphere in this thing is incredible, I barely completed the first quest before unlocking the whole game. Will come back when I get as far as you guys/gals have. Very cool game.
Have fun and let us know how things go. Hint about the Dragon: Do not go there until you killed all the Ice Giants and did what's needed with their corpses. I just lost over an hour of progress because I made a mistake in an area inside the Dragon from where I cannot get back to town There's at least 8 of the Ice Giants, maybe more; I'll go over that area with a fine comb again, to make sure I didn't miss any. And if anyone finds something about those two, let me know: - Can I do anything with the giant "lantern" in the Ice Giant area? The hint spell only tells me "good idea, but wrong item" when I throw stuff at it. - Is there a way to attack those giant lavaworms inside the Dragon without eating a hit from them first?
Ice Giants do respawn Good news on the Ice Giants: Those respawn every time you leave their area. So we can get as many of the Ice Armours made as we want. When you play the Loot song when you kill one, you also get 131 Gold. Not too much, but they fall easily enough. Pro tip: Get a cheap ranged weapon for everyone, and cast Flame Weapon on them. The Ship Mage with a cheap bow (cheapest actually, I think) and Flame Weapon does 92 damage per multi-shot; compared to a measly 24 damage from a level 3 Fireball. Too bad we cannot return to the Ship for killing more Giants, that'd be a lot easier. Two of my Mages are two levels behind everyone else. Think I'll explore the Forest fully first, and let them gain XP at the same time: Playing a song while you move around gives XP, and adds up pretty quickly.
Question: I am on the ship at the very end of the 1st sub level I need to Spoiler get the "crank" to the elevator(?) behind a locked room with no keyhole . How? Any help would be appreciated.
Look to the north of the locked door. The door-opener is on a wall in a niche, really easy to miss. That's the room I recommend for grinding Giants, by fhe way. I made it through the Dragon, struggling with the Labyrinth now. I'll post a bit more tomorrow or so.
Is there a trick to using th lily pads in the swamps? A certain area to use them? They dry out too fast to move them anywhere.
You need to use them right south of where you get them, to cross 2 squares of water; and yes, it requires some experimenting to get the timing right. If I remember right, they last for 6 steps or so before they dry out. Just enough to get from the northern plant to the spot south of it where you throw them into the water. If you need more help, I can make a screenshot tomorrow and give more details.
Unfortunately you cannot, which in my book is a design flaw, but ah well... So better make good use of your time there Didn't find any other spot yet that is equally good for grinding. But then I still have a long way to go, it seems. Found the Labyrinth to be supremely annoying (I am so not good at this kind of puzzle thingie); took a bit of a break until I feel like drawing my own map; maybe tomorrow, I really want to continue onwards. So far, it's a great and captivating game. By the way: I went pretty much all-out on the Magic. Does anyone use a weapon-oriented party, especially melee?
I find the current implementation of magic makes weapon user very unfavorable cause they are much less powerful than the attack spells and there are a lot of ways to replenish MP. There is nothing that beats the fireball. I think Dog and the guy from the ship are the ones who could become weapon users. The magical weapons are way too expensive to try out. What's next? Dragon Belly or Ice Wall? Looks like the latter may be more favorable...
Yep, that was my impression too. Which got me wondering if a weapon-focused party would work as well. Spot on. Until you meet enemies where it doesn't do damage Interesting, I didn't consider Dog as weapon-user at all. And the price difference between magic melee weapons and high-end staffs didn't seem that much. Ah, you'll find out yourself, it's pretty obvious
1. Well I already have magic missile which could be the ranged replacement 2. Dog is relatively high on Strength value so beefing him up a bit on this department, may help. Note: the song that speeds your party up is of great value. Get one of your member with low Magic/Speed and let him/her play the song, you can almost double the number of moves this way. I have 5 mages in my party while on ship and they can finish off a giant, using fireball alone, even before the end of one round this way, and take zero damage. Talk about one-way slaughter.
I found a cool little trick to help gain Glenead relatively early. I have her in my party and my main character is only level 6. Here's what I did: 1) After getting out of the Crypt I had close to 1,800 gold. I spoke with the musical trainer in the upper left corner to raise my charisma to 30 (I think I cost 810 gold). 2) Then I equipped the flute to my main character, and started playing the healing song. 3) Walk around the town to gain experience from playing the flute, get a level, put all 5 points into charisma. 4) Repeat until you have 45 points in charisma, and then go speak with Glenead. You only need 44 in charisma in order to recruit her, so you're now good to go! Plus the prices at shops will now be A LOT lower to boot. Enjoy!
